Enter a new world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism and ever-shifting identities with the wildly acclaimed and astonishingly prolific novelist.

The author of 58 novels, as well as plays, poetry, non-fiction and short stories, Joyce Carol Oates is famed across the literary world for writing at a speed which leaves her contemporaries trailing in the dust. But the fact of her productivity — and the sheer challenge of keeping up with such a prodigious writer – too often masks the more significant truth: that Joyce Carol Oates may be the most original, erudite, and versatile voice in American letters.

In this livestream, In Conversation event we’ll dive into the stories of her new collection Zero Sum and hear her take on the strange and troubled times we live in.

A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmanoeuvred; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as ‘mother’. In the collection’s longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with ‘drafts’ of his own suicide.

Whether you are a committed fan or a newcomer taking your first dip into her oeuvre, this is the perfect way to meet one of the peerless artists of our age.